ADMINISTRATION CENTER AT 75

Celebration marks anniversary of county building, dedicated by President Roosevelt

San Diego 
Tuesday marks the 75th birthday of what some consider the most beautiful public building in the region — the County Administration Center.

“To me, it’s the most iconic building we have in the city of San Diego,” said Board of Supervisors Chairman Greg Cox, who will lead the celebration at the 10 a.m. board meeting and a noon picnic with two birthday cakes for the public.

Built in 1938 as the San Diego City and County Administration Building, the CAC today is where you record documents, pay your property taxes, get a marriage license and look up county assessor’s records. The city moved to its present quarters on C Street in 1964.

But for the casual visitor, the building is a monument to Depression-era architecture. Designed by four San Diego architects and financed largely from $1 million in federal Works Progress Administration funds, the four-story building and nine-story tower features red tile roofs, inspiring messages, symbols and images in stone and terrazzo and oil paint about the building purposes.

To complement its architectural majesty, the county is replacing its north and south parking lots with parkland that will tie into the North Embarcadero Visionary Plan on Harbor Drive.

“I think when they complete the park and the parking lots are gone, it’ll make this a really outstanding landmark on the waterfront — our Sydney Opera House,” said former City Architect Mike Stepner, now a professor at the NewSchool of Architecture and Design.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the building on July 16, 1938, the same day the city traditionally celebrates its founding in 1769 by Father Junipero Serra.

“I would like to say that I like especially the sentiment expressed on the face of it,” FDR said in his three-minute speech — ‘The noblest motive is the public good.’ I think if we all carry that motto in our hearts, in every city and community in the land, there is no question but the proper thing, American democracy, will survive.”

On hand 75 years ago was Marian Harvey, then age 10, the daughter of the El Cajon city clerk, who despite being a staunch Republican, took her to the afternoon ceremony to see a president in person.

“I’ve always liked it,” she said of the county building. “I like where it is, what it stands for.”

It took San Diegans 30 years to get the building completed, entangled as so many other public projects in controversy all the way along. It was originally designed to head the “Cedar Street Mall” linking the bay to Balboa Park. But politics and turf-war bickering led to agencies scattering buildings elsewhere in the city and county.

Besides that history, there are secret and little-known corners of the building that few get to see. Cox and building manager Leonard Pinson agreed to show us in an afternoon expedition into the sky and below ground.

Mayor’s office

The eighth floor of the tower is where mayors, from Percy J. Benbough to Frank Curran, conducted business. It’s now a conference room. It was closed to the public for many years until a secondary stairway was constructed on the south as part of a $3 million upgrade to the building in 1988.